Reliable Dailies

[lordkiwi]

From my experiences so far of 4E (GMing 3 sessions) I've found it's very easy to miss. That's fine for at-will or encounter powers, but having 2/3 daily powers fail is rather disapointing. Dailies should be where your character really shines, showing off to the world what a hero they are, and more often than not they fizzle.

So I suggest the following rules:

If you miss with every attack roll from a Daily power you do not lose access to the power.
If the power had the reliable keyword then you do not lose the action either, although you cannot attempt the Daily Power again using the same action. [N.B. No Reliable power has a Miss effects as far as I can see, there should be no 'wanting to miss' problems.]
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Yes it will make the PCs sligthly more pwoerful, but I don't think its anything I can't compensate for in my encounter design.

Lord Kiwi,

 

[keterys]

Seems a bit strong for certain powers, like Lead the Attack. For many powers it'll be fine though.

 

[lordkiwi]

Seems a bit strong for certain powers, like Lead the Attack. For many powers it'll be fine though.

Good catch, it'd be a problem with most of the Warlord level 1 dailies, looking at it. One of two fixes then:
A: You can't try the same daily twice in an encounter.
B: Any effects of the first use disapear when you use it a second time (hit or miss).

I'm inclined towards B, otherwise you miss with a daily during the 'big end battle' and the rule is useless, and that is when this rule should apply the most.

Lord Kiwi,

 

[generalhenry]

That's why most dailies have effects if they miss.

 

[lordkiwi]

That's why most dailies have effects if they miss.

True, but 1/2 damage and no special effect (generaly) is still a bit lame for your 'big gun'. Especialy at level 1-4 you only have one, so if it misses your chance to really shine today has passed.

I like that most dailys have a 'miss' or 'effect' effect, but it's nothing like actually hitting.

 

[zaxzilla]

I thought about this and added a new feat to my power specific feats called "Desperate Accuracy". Its basically the elven racial power applied to one use of a daily power once per day.

 

[lordkiwi]

Even then though, you need the feat and you're reducing a 50% chance to suck to a 25% chance, not good odds.

 

[zaxzilla]

Even then though, you need the feat and you're reducing a 50% chance to suck to a 25% chance, not good odds.

It's only a 50% chance if you have to roll a 11 or higher. But even if that where the case it would make your dailies work the majority of the time. The problem with changing how dailies miss is your weakening specific class features. One of the fighters strength is they can keep there daily powers if they miss, wizards have dailies versus multiple opponents and then it makes all powers that do something on miss weaker. It alos makes the elven racial power less significant.

You could do it but to be fair you'd have to rewrite all daily powers.

 

[lordkiwi]

In my experience people seem to need between 8 and 12 to hit on most attacks against most things, hence a guess at 50%.

Fighters have reliable powers... they get a huge bonus because if you miss, you can try something else instead AND keep the power.

Pretty much all dailies do something on a miss, so they are balanced against each other. Encounter powers don't really need to be balanced against dailies, they perform a different purpose IMO.

 

[Mengu]

I can see this implementation for a small party, but when you have a party of 6 or 7, I honestly don't want to see everyone's daily powers to be reliable. At 10th level that is a lot of guaranteed fire power.

Also this implementation would make people use dailies more wrecklessly, in some cases trying to miss, so as to get the Miss or Effect benefit, while retaining the power.

Yet another drawback is that there is a lot of party cooperation going on to make those daily powers work more reliably. Suddenly all that work won't be as necessary. An Elf ranger may let the cleric know when he's getting ready to shoot those trolls down, and he might follow it up with a sneaky maneuver to get some cover from a tree, and hide himself. Next turn he might end up benefitting from a Lance of Faith Bonus, as well as Combat advantage, to give himself a +4 to hit with Split the Tree, and can still make use of Elven Accuracy, and maybe even Elven Precission to turn a miss into a hit.

However, having said all that, if you have a party of 3 or fewer characters, this could be a good house rule, since they won't necessarily have as many tools to help each other with.